Clear
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Mandrea, AU. Sometimes in relationships you have to have the serious conversations-just to make sure that everything is crystal clear. Merle/Andrea. Rated for language and discussed situations.
**AN: So this is just a little one-shot that's based off the prompt from a Tumblr anon that wanted Mandrea in a situation where a certain statement was made. I hope that I've done it justice.**

 **I own nothing from the Walking Dead.**

 **I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

"I've heard all the lines before," Merle proclaimed. "Every last one of 'em and I just wanna be damn clear about this shit."

Andrea sat on the stool in the bar—almost empty at this hour because they were early for the big crowd and were really only surrounded by the handful of diehard regulars that meandered in around five every day—and listened as Merle gave her his speech. No one was paying either of them any attention, except for maybe the bartender every now and again, but it was clear to Andrea that she was supposed to be paying a great deal of attention.

This seemed well-prepared. It seemed almost _rehearsed_. She could imagine Merle practicing it in the car, or maybe in front of the bathroom mirror that she'd finally cleaned for him because she was tired of not being able to see herself in it when she spent the night at his house.

This was supposed to be something like an anniversary for them. At least, that's what Andrea thought. It had been six months since the first time that they'd gone out on what anyone could possibly twist into being an actual "date". They'd known each other a good while before that—both in the conventional sense and in the Biblical sense—but it was only six months ago that Merle had asked her for a date.

At least, Andrea liked to think of it as a date. That request hadn't been very well rehearsed. It had been more the stumbling and bumbling stringing together of words and grunts that had ended in a rough statement that fell somewhere between declaration and question. It boiled down to the poetic line of "you, me, eat together, in public, wearing clothes".

Andrea, for whatever reason, had accepted.

Now she and Merle ate together, in public, wearing clothes, very nearly once a week. They also ate together, in private, not wearing clothes with much more regularity.

Andrea had three changes of clothes and a toothbrush at Merle's trailer. He had two pair of underwear and a clean shirt—probably a week's worth of clothes in Merle's opinion—at her small home.

And now they were at the bar again, their normal haunt for a Friday night, almost six months to the date from when Merle had asked Andrea to eat with him in public. The speech that Merle was giving tonight, though, was one that he'd clearly thought through—and he'd thought through it more than once.

"I think I understand," Andrea said, not sure that she meant a single word of her utterance.

Merle was off his stool now and pacing a very small path back and forth in front of the seat that Andrea occupied and the seat that he occupied when he bothered sitting down. Three whisky shots had gotten him to this place and Andrea was more amused at his overall behavior than she was concerned by the words he was throwing at her.

"I wanna make damn sure ya do!" Merle declared with a little fire behind his voice. "I don't wanna hear none of this—I didn't know bullshit. Or none a' that damn...that...damn...didn't know we was nothin' _official_ shit."

Andrea bit her lip hard enough to make herself wince and wait for the copper taste of blood. She didn't want to look too amused because it could very well spook Merle Dixon. He was notorious for not being good at relationships. He was notorious, too, for not being interested in relationship.

But that was his reputation. And Andrea knew well that reputations were about ten percent truth and ninety percent whatever anybody simply _wanted_ to believe about someone.

The Merle Dixon that she knew was very interested in relationships. The biggest problem he had was that they absolutely terrified him. The idea of committing to someone was probably somewhere on the same level with facing a bear barehanded. But Andrea also knew that it wasn't that Merle was, as many people believed, terrified that he couldn't handle that commitment. On the contrary, it was other people that he didn't trust very much. That led him to believe that others, rather than himself, weren't going to be able to handle the idea of something that lasted beyond the sunrise.

Out of that distrust for others, and that expectation of being let down from the moment that he hit his high, Merle's reputation had been born. He left in the morning, before the sun came up, so he wouldn't have to suffer the indignity of being asked to leave. He didn't call so he wouldn't have to hear some reworded and newly spun version of "it's not you, it's me". He threw down the cards as quickly as he picked them up to keep from experiencing rejection—or to keep from experiencing _more_ rejection.

Because rejection was something that Merle knew well. He'd had his first taste of it, more than likely, before he'd ever even tasted solid food.

Merle's reputation had been born out of his attempts to move faster than the women he saw as his opponents.

Andrea had made it very clear to Merle, before she even took him home with her after the first time that they ate, in public, with clothes on, that she wasn't interested in that any longer. If he was going to take her out—in such a fashion—then she expected to be treated like the dinner had been just as much his idea as hers. She expected him to be there when she woke up in the morning. And she expected him to eat the pancakes that she made. And if he couldn't handle that? Then he might as well let her know before they ever left the restaurant because she wouldn't stand for the behavior she'd accepted before that any longer. A nice date deserved a nice gesture following it. And a night spent together after a nice date deserved to be followed by a nice morning.

The next morning? Andrea had learned how Merle liked his coffee. And she'd learned that he could eat three times as many pancakes as she'd anticipated. And she'd learned that a happy Merle-in-the-morning was even more enthusiastic about going _back_ to bed than he'd been about going to bed in the first place.

She'd learned that Merle didn't _want_ to leave as much as he simply thought it was the right thing to do. She'd broken that behavior in him in the simplest way that anyone could imagine. She'd simply let him know that _she_ didn't want him to leave. She wanted him to _stay_.

So stay he did.

"So—we're official," Andrea said, carefully drawing out her words and watching his expression. At first he furrowed his brow, like he was mulling over the words now that they were being said in her voice instead of his own, and then his features relaxed. He stopped the pacing directly in front of her and he nodded. She took the chance to continue then. "And—since we're official? That means that you don't—do _anything_ —with anyone else."

"And you don't neither," Merle interjected quickly.

Andrea nodded.

"And I don't either," she confirmed. She didn't point out to him that neither of them, as far as she was aware at least, had been doing anything with anyone else for at least six months. They hadn't had time. Beyond work, they'd been spending almost all of their free time together. The speech was carefully prepared, so that meant it was important to Merle. It was better not to let him know that it was entirely unnecessary. "Is that all I needed to understand?" She asked, raising her eyebrows at him.

Merle considered it. He sucked in a breath and let it out. In his mind, and she knew this as surely as if she could see the gears turning rapidly in his brain, Merle thought through everything he'd said once more to check whether or not such a simple statement could sum up everything he'd been saying for at least a half an hour. He let out a satisfied and affirmative grunt before he returned to his bar stool and took one of the two whisky shots that were lined up and waiting for him. Andrea reached over, without invitation, and helped herself to the second, closing her eyes against the burn of the liquid as it made its way down her throat.

When she opened her eyes, Merle was staring at her in a way that might have unnerved her a little if she hadn't already been sharing a few after-work whisky shots with him. She felt her face grow warm and blamed it on the beverage. To break the look, she turned her attention to flagging down the bartender and gesturing her request for two more shots to share between them. When she looked back, though, Merle hadn't broken his stare.

"You're already drunk enough you can't stop staring?" Andrea teased.

One side of Merle's mouth drew up into the curl that was his simplest smile.

"Can't do that no way," he said. It worked, though, because he broke his stare and sent his gaze trailing around the bar to the other people who were there and already unwinding from their days. He cleared his throat. "Most of them—can't neither."

"But I don't see it when they do it," Andrea pointed out, fiddling with the corner of a napkin she'd brought over to wipe up some liquid that she'd spilled somewhere along the way.

Merle hummed in response to her statement.

"I do," he said. He looked back at her, not quite as intently as before. He gestured, waving his hands in front of her to sweep the air in front of her. "Just so we clear," he said, "this? All this? This is mine."

Andrea didn't try to hide her amusement then. She raised her eyebrows at him, but she didn't respond.

"We clear?" Merle asked, pushing her to respond. "All—it's all mine. That's—that's what we're doin'. We—uh—we clear?"

Andrea swallowed and nodded. She toyed with the now empty shot glass that was waiting on the bartender to come and whisk it off to be washed.

"And—that," she said, gesturing a hand loosely in Merle's direction. "That's all mine."

Merle hummed.

Andrea nodded her acceptance of the verbal agreement and held her hand out to Merle.

"Quarters," she said. "I'm going to find something worth listeneing to. I can't take anymore of this—crying in your beer shit."

Merle burrowed in his pocket, produced a few quarters for the jukebox that hung out in the corner of the establishment—a quarter a play in this place—and passed it to Andrea. She got up from her stool and walked across the bar, purposefully sashaying as she went to give Merle a show, and bent over the jukebox dramatically to make her selection with her back to him.

"Andrea..." Merle called rather loudly, getting her attention over the din of voices and sad music in the bar. Andrea looked over her shoulder at him. He offered her a grin. "That's mine too," he said. "Just so we're clear."

Andrea laughed to herself.

"We're clear, Merle," she responded before she turned back to pick something a little more upbeat for at least the next fifteen minutes of the evening.


End file.
